Kyle Mantyla's blog

Glenn Beck appeared on Dana Loesch's program, which airs on his TheBlaze television network, last night to discuss his outrage and disappointment in Ted Cruz for endorsing Donald Trump. He speculated that "the smarmiest of the smarmy" within the Texas GOP had threatened to destroy Cruz's political career and derail his bid for re-election in 2016 if he didn't endorse Trump, which caused Cruz to cave because he lost faith in divine providence.

"I think he had a moment of doubt, not of the people, of the protection of divine providence," Beck theorized.

Beck said that if he lost his entire company and wound up in jail, he would trust that divine providence would ensure that he still had a voice because even "Nelson Mandela had a voice because he was in jail."

"If you really know your principles and you say, 'I believe in the protection of divine providence, whatever is supposed to happen and get His message out, He will get it out,'" Beck said, "I believe in that. What Ted did was, I think, is what all of them do, 'I've got to be there so I've to to triangulate, this will work and this won't work and I don't see a way of that working.'"

"Well, I don't see a way that any of this works. I believe that will work," Beck said, pointing to heaven.

On his "Pray In Jesus Name" program today, Colorado state Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt responded to Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" comment by declaring that she is un-Christian and possessed by a "demonic, evil spirit of hatred."

"She's talking about you, the viewer of this program," Klingenschmitt declared. "If you believe the Bible, Hillary deplores you! Now, those are just the facts; let's discern the spirits, let's take a moment and say what is it inside of Hillary that makes her deplore us? She's labeling an entire category of people as we're deplorable, does that mean she deplores us? Does that say something about what's inside of her, not what's inside of us?"

"What is inside of her but the spirit of hatred?" he continued. "This demonic, evil spirit of hatred and deploring is not inside of us, it's inside of her toward us. And her behavior, her hatred makes her a very hateful woman, a very deploring woman. Do you see it inside of her? Can you look inside of her and say, 'That must be a Christian woman who loves Jesus, who loves the Bible and even loves her enemies'? ... No, she deplores us. By her own confession now, she is manifesting the spirit of hatred and that makes her anti-Christian."

Klingenschmitt closed out the segment by praying that God will deliver Clinton "from this demonic spirit of hatred."

On Friday, Ted Cruz officially endorsed Donald Trump and the news did not sit well with Glenn Beck, who had campaigned for Cruz during the Republican primaries on the grounds that he had been anointed by God to save America, and who has vowed never to support Trump.

Cruz appeared on Beck's radio show today to try and justify his decision and it did not go well for Cruz.

Beck grilled the Texas senator on what could have changed about Trump to convince him that he can now support the man he once called an utterly amoral pathological liar. Cruz defended himself almost entirely by citing Trump's latest promise to appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court, which Beck wasn't buying because Trump first made that promise months ago and yet Cruz still refused to endorse Trump when he spoke at the Republican National Convention in July.

Upon returning from a commercial break, Beck unloaded on Cruz and his disingenuous justification for endorsing Trump, declaring that Cruz had said things during their interview that Beck personally knows to be untrue.

"For the very first time, I heard Ted Cruz calculate and when that happened, the whole thing fell apart for me," Beck said, declaring that he blames himself for thinking that Cruz was a man of principle instead of just another politician.

Eventually, Beck's fury got the better of him as he worked himself up into a bellowing frenzy.

"We have become PETA. Shame on all of us," Beck fumed over being repeatedly told by Cruz that this election represents a "binary choice" between Hillary Clinton and Trump, outraged that on every issue, the only thing that seems to matter now is that you agree with the people on your side. "Why not, if you won't vote for Hillary or you won't vote for Trump, why not just cover me in a bucket of blood?"

"Why not just shame me in the public square?" Beck thundered. "There is no difference between the two teams any more ... Which one is for the idea that all men are created equal? That all men have a right to pursue their own happiness and make their own goddamn decisions? Which one? Which one? I contend neither of them and so we will just soak each other in buckets of blood. We'll be a happy little bumper-sticker community that shames one another to make sure you walk in goosestep with all the other Hillary supporters or walk in goosestep with all the other Trump supporters."

Glenn Beck is predictably heartbroken by the news: "Profoundly sad day for me. Disappointment does not begin to describe."

Paul Hair says that only a nation in "the grips of evil" would tolerate "Barack Obama and all of the terrible things he has done. Furthermore, it may elect a woman just like him as his successor."

Cliff Kincaid wants to know why the new National Museum of African American History and Culture won't have displays on "Unpatriotic black sports figures" or "Martin Luther King Jr.’s womanizing, plagiarism, and communist advisers."

Finally, Tim Wildmon says that "what is going on is a country in rebellion against God Almighty. This is about putting the final touches on the sexual revolution. The Bible clearly states that homosexuality is unnatural, immoral, and unhealthy. Everyone knows that a man who thinks he is a woman has a mental disorder, not to mention a spiritual one."

As we have notedseveraltimesbefore, American Family Radio's Bryan Fischer has an understanding of the First Amendment that makes absolutely no sense, as he regularly insists that it only applies to Congress ... except for all the times when he insists that it applies to all sorts of government entities.

Fischer's incoherence has been on full display regarding the case of Joe Kennedy, a high school football coach from Washington state who was fired after he refused to stop praying with players and students after games. Despite the fact that Fischer has repeatedly declared that "it is constitutionally and historically impossible for a school to violate the First Amendment ... [b]ecause a school is not Congress," he simultaneously insists that the school district has violated Kennedy's First Amendment rights by not allowing him to pray after games.

"Good for you, coach Joe Kennedy," Fischer declared. "He's taking the district to court for violating his First Amendment rights, which is exactly what they've done ... What does the First Amendment say? It says that Congress—and Bremerton [School District,] they interpret that to mean any governmental authority, that would include schools because they're government schools—is not allowed to prohibit the free exercise of religion. What did Bremerton School District do when they told Joe Kennedy, 'You can't pray at midfield after a game'? They prohibited his free exercise of religion! They told him, 'Your constitutional right—even though this is government property and the government is specifically prohibited from infringing on your free exercise rights—we are going to destroy the First Amendment here, doesn't apply in Bremerton, doesn't apply on a football field, you have lost that right. You have not only lost that right, you have lost your job.'"

Today, Fischer posted a column blasting a report recently released by the United States Commission on Civil Rights that further undermines his argument in the Kennedy case, as he explicitly states that a school district can never be guilty of violating the First Amendment:

The very first word in the First Amendment is “Congress.” The First Amendment was intended as a restraint on Congress and Congress alone. It is simply impossible for any other entity - be it a state, a county, a city, a school district, a school teacher, or a student - to violate the First Amendment for the simple reason that it wasn’t written to restrain them.

Only Congress can violate the Founders’ Constitution, and it can do so in only two ways. First, it can violate the Establishment Clause by picking one Christian denomination and making it the official church of the United States. As long as Congress doesn’t do that, it can do anything it wants with regard to religious expression. It can pay a chaplain to pray Christian prayers and proclaim as many national days of prayer as it would like.

States under the Founders’ Constitution are free to regulate religious expression in any way they would like without any interference from the federal government. States can even have an established religion if they want to, and at the time of the Founding, 10 of them did.

Secondly, only Congress can violate the Free Exercise clause because it applies specifically and exclusively to Congress. Congress - and by extension the entire federal government, including the judiciary - is flatly prohibited from interfering with the free exercise of the Christian religion in any way, shape or form. Any such effort on the part of any branch of the federal government, whether it’s the legislative branch, the executive branch, or the judicial branch, is flatly and permanently forbidden by the Founders’ Constitution.

The federal government has zero authority to tell schools what they may and may not do with regard to Bible reading in classrooms, prayer at assemblies and graduation ceremonies, or the posting of the Ten Commandments on school room walls. Those matters are for state and local authorities to decide. Period.

Just last month, Fischer accused the Bremerton School District of violating the First Amendment, but today, he stated that it is "impossible" for a school district to ever violate the First Amendment.

Unless Fischer is arguing that he believes that local public schools are also "Congress," then his argument makes no sense, especially since he asserts in his latest piece that states are "free to regulate religious expression in any way they would like."

Under Fischer's own argument, any state would be free to prohibit Kennedy or anyone else from exercising their religion for any reason, or, for that matter, to restrict the freedom of speech, freedom of the press or the right to peaceably assemble, which are also protected by the First Amendment.

Fischer's outrage over the Kennedy case proves that he clearly does't believe, or possibly doesn't even understand, his own stated position.

Right-wing activist Jesse Lee Peterson recently delivered a sermon in which he warned his congregation not to become intellectuals because intellectualism is responsible for foisting things like gay marriage upon America.

"I notice that the people who are really into the intellect are nutcases," Peterson said. "Absolute nutcases. Because of this intellectual thing taking over and the people rule us, we now have so-called same-sex marriage. That wouldn't happen if we weren't into the intellect. Common sense would dictate that is not going to happen and common sense wouldn't care what you thought about it because we would know that that's wrong."

Intellectuals are also responsible for the fact that "we now have drag queens running around in the military," Peterson added.

"Can you imagine jumping down in a foxhole, running from bin Laden, and there is a man in there with a dress and lipstick on? It would shock you. You would rather be out with bin Laden," Peterson stated, apparently so dedicated to being anti-intellectual that he's totally unaware that Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011.

People simply need to rely "on the intellect of God," he recommended, because human intellect is a tool of the devil, which is why "all intellectual people are insecure people ... because their father is weak, their father Satan is a deceiver."